COPE Digest: Publication Ethics in Practice. May 2014 (Vol. 2, Issue 5)

Letter from the Chair

As the Northern hemisphere summer approaches, our seminar programme continues with the COPE Australian seminar (in Autumn!) in Melbourne in June and our 5th North American Seminar in Philadelphia in August. We would love to see you there and welcome any feedback on our events. It's tremendous to see so many global events.

This month sees the launch of a new eLearning module, ‘Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern’, bringing the total to nine eLearning modules available on the COPE website. This one covers the importance of corrections, retractions and expressions of concern, and ways to correct the literature. As with all of the eLearning modules, these can now be completed not only by the editor-in-chief, but by your staff or editorial board members. See our Focus piece on now to invite people to be members of COPE.

COPE council members regularly give talks. I spoke recently at a research ethics meeting in Adelaide, and several of our Council members attended the recent CSE meeting. If you have a meeting that you think you'd like a COPE council member to attend, or one that we might publicise, please get in touch.

Further afield, falsification, fabrication and plagiarism continue to dominate the headlines. But on a more positive note, students are being trained on how to recognise appropriate sources, and digital technology is being used to help researchers identify their contributions to collaborative projects.

If you would like to contribute items or have other suggestions, as always, please get in touch (contact us here).

Focus

Manage your COPE membership

Make the most of your COPE Membership by inviting your staff or editorial board members to be members of COPE with full member privileges. By adding your editorial staff and board members, you will provide them with access to all the member resources COPE has to offer, including the eLearning modules. It’s easy to do.

As the journal editor (or the main contact for the journal or publisher) you are now considered the 'Manager' of your “group.” Log in to your account and then locate your journal record, either by selecting the 'Members' tab and searching in the alphabetical list or by entering your journal’s name in the search window on any page. Once you have located your journal record, you will see an administration box on the right hand side of the screen. Select the 'Manage members', option as shown in the screenshot. Click on the 'Invite people' link in the actions section and simply add the email address of the person you wish to invite. You can invite multiple people at once by entering their email addresses, separated by commas, into the box. The final step: Click on the icon to Invite user(s) and a one-time login link will be sent to the email addresses you have entered. Each journal group is limited to 50 people.

In the news

Conflict of interest and the US senate

Several Republican party senators want to stop a request for scientists to disclose financial conflicts in their research
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/26/the-republican-street-fight-over-transparency-in-government.html

COPE resources:
Conflict of interest flowcharts
eLearning: Conflict of Interest

Open access in the humanities and social sciences

The case is not clear surrounding the issues that may arise for open access publishing in the humanities and social sciences
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/04/17/open-access-in-the-humanities-and-social-sciences-an-interview-with-chris-wickham/

Is pressure to publish causing scientific fraud?

Retraction of BJUI prostate cancer paper because of lack of ethical approval

The retraction has been agreed due to the exact protocol used not having the approval of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's institutional review board
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bju.12613/abstract

COPE resources:
Retraction guidelines
eLearning: Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern

How well are US medical school institutions doing to promote research integrity?

Beyond plagiarism in academia

Teaching and training for students on how to recognise appropriate sources
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/21/experts-explore-plagiarism-beyond-traditional-definition#sthash.pfQh4zXp.dpbs

COPE resources:
How should editors respond to plagiarism?
Plagiarism flowcharts
eLearning: Plagiarism

Publisher to pulp existing copies of science communication book because of plagiarism

Taylor and Francis to pulp existing copies of science communication book and suspend electronic copies indefinitely because of plagiarism
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/04/17/publisher-to-pulp-existing-copies-of-science-communication-book-because-of-plagiarism/

COPE resources:
How should editors respond to plagiarism?
Plagiarism flowcharts
eLearning:Plagiarism

Dealing with multiauthor papers: knowing who did what

Liz Allen, Amy Brand, Jo Scott, Micah Altman and Marjorie Hlava are trialling digital taxonomies to help researchers identify their contributions to collaborative projects
http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-credit-where-credit-is-due-1.15033

Sting papers, predatory journals and the media

Tom Spears reports from the Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Blinded+scientific+gobbledygook/9757736/story.html

New resource aims to provide quality insight into open access resources

ROAD, Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, a subset of the ISSN register
http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1575

OASPA reinstates SAGE membership after 6 month suspension

OASPA’s Membership Committee has now reinstated SAGE's membership following the decision to place SAGE Publication’s membership under review as a result of concerns that were raised regarding the peer review policies of one of its journals
http://oaspa.org/sage-membership-of-oaspa-is-reinstated/

HORIZON 2020 programme

Funding available. Call for proposals on developing governance for the advancement of responsible research and innovation (GARRI5.2014: Ethics in Research: Promoting Integrity). Deadline 2 October 2014.
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/2405-garri-5-2014.html

What's been happening at COPE

‘Ask COPE’

In a new initiative, COPE will be hosting a monthly ‘Ask COPE’ service. Available as a member benefit, members can ask a publication ethics related question of Council in real-time via our webinar facility.

The next Ask COPE will be held on Tuesday 13 May 2014 at 3pm (British Summer Time). Further details can be found on the website: http://publicationethics.org/'ask-cope'

New eLearning module launched

'Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern' is the new COPE eLearning module just launched. The module will cover the importance of corrections, retractions and expressions of concern; terms and definitions used; and ways to correct the literature. It can be found on the COPE eLearning page.

Videos of presentations from COPE European Seminar now available

Videos of most of the presentations at the COPE European Seminar, on 14 March 2014 in Brussels, Belgium, are now available on the COPE website to view. These and all of our previous videos can be viewed on our YouTube channel. To subscribe, please click here.

COPE Australian seminar 2014

Registration is now open for the COPE Australian seminar, which will take place on Monday 23 June 2014, at Karstens Melbourne Conference Rooms, 123 Queen Street Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. For details and to register see here.

COPE North American seminar 2014

Register for COPE's 5th North American seminar, which will be held in collaboration with ISMTE (International Society of Managing & Technical Editors), on Wednesday 13 August 2014 at the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The theme of the COPE seminar will be centred around 'new technologies and behaviours for identifying publication ethics issues'. For more details and to register, see here.

Case of the month

Every month we will be highlighting a publication ethics case that has been brought to COPE by one of its members. Cases will be highlighted for a number of reasons - they may be of broad interest, introduce an important new issue that members may not be aware of, or reflect a topic that COPE is increasingly being asked for advice about. We welcome comments and further discussion about the cases and will provide summaries in future issues.

Authorship dispute (case # 13-10)

Drs A and B, who worked and published jointly in the past, are now in dispute over a published paper. The manuscript was published in journal X, submitted by several co-authors, including one of the editors in chief of journal X, Dr A. However, Dr B claims that this article should be withdrawn because it contains unauthorized data from him. What should the editor of journal X do?

Click below to find out what the Forum advised

http://publicationethics.org/case/authorship-dispute-4

Feedback can be provided here http://publicationethics.org/contact-us

COPE resources:
eLearning: authorship

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